Attacks on computer infrastructures are a serious problem, one that has grown directly in proportion to the growth of the Internet itself. Most deployed computer systems are vulnerable to attack. The field of remediation addresses such vulnerabilities and should be understood as including the taking of deliberate precautionary measures to improve the reliability, availability, and survivability of computer-based assets and/or infrastructures, particularly with regard to specific known vulnerabilities and threats.
Remediation is based upon knowledge of vulnerabilities. There are many sources of information regarding vulnerabilities, which can be organized into three source categories: non-fee-based open source; non-fee-based computer-vendor; and fee-based vulnerability assessment vendor (VAV). Among the non-fee-based open-sources, the CERT® Coordination Center (hereafter, CERT®), which was the first computer security incident response team (established in November 1988 after a Cornell University graduate student released the “Morris Worm,” which brought down much of the Internet and demonstrated the growing network's susceptibility to attack), provides some of the most complete information available about computer system vulnerabilities. For example, an incident report from CERT® about a vulnerability generally includes: a description of it (and typically a list of one or more identifiers associated with it); a characterization of its impact upon a susceptible system; one or more suggested remediations (“solutions” according to CERT® phraseology); and links to other sources of information about it.